Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/93

  particulars as to Butler, more especially in chaps. vii. viii. ix. and xi. of part i., and in part ii. concerning his descent. It was reprinted London, 1859. As to Butler's share in Wallenstein's catastrophe, however, the best authority is the account written in answer to the inquiries of a Ratisbon priest by Patrick Taaffe, Butler's regimental chaplain, at the time of the murder, which is printed by Mailáth, Geschichte d. österreich. Kaiserstaats (1842), iii. 367–376, and is in substance accepted by Ranke, for whose account of the catastrophe see his Geschichte Wallenstein's (1869), 402–456. Cf. also the article on Walter Butler by Landmann, in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, iii. 651–653; and Lodge's Peerage of Ireland (1789), iv. 17.] 

BUTLER, WEEDEN, the elder (1742–1823), miscellaneous writer, was born at Margate on 22 Sept. 1742. He was articled to a solicitor in London, but quitted the legal profession for the church. He acted as amanuensis to Dr. William Dodd from 1764 till his patron's ignominious end in 1777. In 1776 he had succeeded Dodd as morning preacher at Charlotte Street chapel, Pimlico, in which fashionable place of worship he officiated till 1814. In 1778 he was lecturer of St. Clement's, Eastcheap, and St. Martin Orgars; and for more than forty years he was master of a classical school at Chelsea. In 1814 he retired to Gayton, where he acted as curate to his son till 1820, when, in consequence of increasing infirmities, he withdrew, at first to the Isle of Wight, next to Bristol, and finally to Greenhill, near Harrow, where he died on 14 July 1823. He was father of Weeden Butler, the younger [q. v.], and of George Butler, D.D., headmaster of Harrow [q. v.]. He was chaplain to the Duke of Kent and the queen's volunteers.

His works are: 1. ‘The Cheltenham Guide,’ London, 1781, 8vo (anon.). 2. ‘Account of the Life and Writings of the Rev. George Stanhope, D.D., Dean of Canterbury,’ London, 1797, 8vo (anon.). 3. ‘Memoir of Mark Hildesley, D.D., Bishop of Sodor and Man,’ London, 1799, 8vo. 4. ‘Pleasing Recollections, or a Walk through the British Musæum. An interlude of two acts,’ Addit. MS. 27276. 5. Poems in manuscript, including ‘The Syracusan,’ a tragedy, and ‘Sir Roger de Coverley,’ a comedy. He also prepared editions of Jortin's ‘Tracts,’ 2 vols. 1790, and Wilcock's ‘Roman Conversations,’ 2 vols. 1797.

[Addit. MSS. 27577, 27578; Nichols's Illust. of Lit. v. 130; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 223; Gent. Mag. xciii. (ii.) 182–4; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Biog. Dict. of Living Authors (1816), 50.] 

BUTLER, WEEDEN, the younger (1773–1831), author, eldest son of the Rev. Weeden Butler mentioned above, was educated by his father till 1790, when he entered Sidney College, Cambridge (B.A. 1794, M.A. 1797). He became afternoon lecturer of Charlotte Street Chapel, and evening lecturer of Brompton in 1811, and was presented to the rectory of Great Woolston, Buckinghamshire, in 1816. After having for nineteen years acted as classical assistant in his father's school, he succeeded to the superintendence of it on his father's retirement in 1814. He died in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, on 28 June 1831.

He published: ‘Bagatelles; or miscellaneous productions, consisting of Original Poetry and Translations,’ London, 1795, 8vo; and translated ‘Prospect of the Political Relations which subsist between the French Republic and the Helvetic Body,’ from the French of Weiss, 1794; ‘The Wrongs of Unterwalden,’ 1799; and ‘Zimao, the African,’ 1800 and 1807.

[Addit. MS. 19209, ff. 123 b, 124 b; Nichols's Illust. of Lit.; Gent. Mag. ci. (ii.) 186; Cat. of Printed Books in Brit. Mus.; Biog. Dict. of Living Authors (1816), 51.] 

BUTLER, or BOTELER, WILLIAM (d. 1410?), a controversial writer against the Wycliffites, was the thirtieth provincial of the Minorites in England. At Oxford in 1401 he wrote as his ‘Determinatio,’ or academical thesis, a tract against the translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue. Pits says this was in vindication of some public edict which ordered the burning of English Bibles, probably deriving the statement from Bale, who says that Purvey asserts (but Bale gives no reference for his citation) that such an order was issued at the instance of the friars; but no such injunction is known of so early a date. It was not until 1408 that Wycliffe's version was condemned in the provincial constitutions of Archbishop Arundel, and owners and readers of the book were declared excommunicate unless license had been obtained by them from their diocesans (, Concilia, 317). Butler's tract exists in one manuscript which is preserved in Merton College, Oxford; unfortunately the first leaf has been deliberately cut out, and all information which the beginning may have afforded as to the immediate cause of the composition of the tract is consequently lost. The colophon alone gives name, date, place, and title, as stated above, except that the first remaining page is also headed ‘Buttiler contra translacionem Anglicanam.’ Bale says that Butler states in this tract that the 